When President Bush II left the White House in 2009, the 13 U.S. courts of appeal were firmly under Republican appointees’ control. Ten appeals courts had majority GOP judges, two were evenly split and only one had a majority of Democrats. President Obama’s 49 appeals court appointees have dramatically altered the landscape. As of the Senate’s recess on May 23, nine of those courts had majority Democratic appointees and four had Republican majorities.

(There are 10 vacancies in the circuit courts. One Obama nominee is awaiting a Senate vote and three nominees pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee.) The change, much feared by Republicans, is not necessarily shocking. But the transformation, in just 5 1/2 years, said University of Pittsburgh law professor Arthur D. Hellman, an authority on the federal circuit courts, marks ”a huge shift in a very short period of time.” And it means that Democratic appointed judges “have the ability to control every important case if they wish to” in those nine circuits, he said.

A president’s Supreme Court nominees get a lot of attention, but presidents shape less visible parts of the judiciary too. Barack Obama is no exception. The Washington Post has a chart showing how the president has changed the composition of the nation’s appeals courts over the last five and a half years: Now, it’s important to say that courts are not supposed to be partisan institutions.

Still, Democratic judicial nominees tend to be more liberal than Republican nominees. And so the growing number of Democrat-appointed judges in our appeals courts will push American jurisprudence to the left on a wide range of issues. And because Obama’s nominees will stay on the bench long after Obama leaves office, these nominations will be one of his most durable legacies.

TPM: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday ordered the federal government to stop enforcing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” …. citing the government’s recent opposition to policies that discriminate based on sexuality.

…..In the decision, the panel also cited the Department of Justice’s decision in February to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act because it is unconstitutional. “The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional,” Attorney General Eric Holder wrote at the time.

The DOJ also filed a forceful brief last week in support of a female federal court employee who was suing the federal government for denying her access to equal benefits for her wife. In the brief, the DOJ acknowledged that “the federal government has played a significant and regrettable role in the history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals” and that DOMA “was motivated in substantial part by animus toward gay and lesbian individuals and their intimate relationships.”

In its decision Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit cited that brief. “In the context of the Defense of Marriage Act,” the Ninth Circuit wrote, “the United States has recently taken the position that classifications based on sexual orientation should be subjected to heightened scrutiny.”

“The circumstances and balance of hardships have changed,” the Ninth Circuit wrote, “and [the government] can no longer satisfy the demanding standard for issuance of a stay.”